Star Citizen Dogfighting Module Delay

A new Roberts Space Industries Letter from the Chairman has an update from Chris Roberts on the status of dogfighting in Star Citizen, RSI's crowd-funded space combat and exploration game (thanks InBlack). He explains that the overabundance of funding they received has allowed them to proceed faster than anticipated, which, counterintuitively means they are delaying the dogfighting module they intended to be one of the first elements of the game released to the public. He explains that they are holding this back to implement their own netcode, rather than using Crytek's, while expressing other concerns about doing things as they originally planned. "So rather than force the team to crunch through the holidays chasing something 'good enough'," Roberts writes, "I am going to make the tough choice to delay the dogfighting module for a couple of months to allow us to take our time and deliver something special." The post is very lengthy, so this is a relatively short excerpt:
Outside of having the dogfighting use the proper backend there is a lot of finesse and detail that needs to go in to get the dogfighting ready for the community’s consumption – The HUD, Damage states, various FX – these are all in progress and look very promising but in my personal opinion aren’t quite ready for prime time.

I feel that the Dogfighting module, especially with Star Citizen’s greatly increased profile, needs to be more polished than a typical “alpha”. There are a lot of eyes on the game, and more than a few people wanting us to fail. Because Dogfighting is the first module that will involve significant gameplay, it has to be good – I don’t feel that we will get a pass just because it is pre-pre alpha.

So we had two choices: either fork development and spend time building something that would involve throwing away work in order to meet the December deadline and deliver something that wouldn’t have the level of polish I’m happy with, or stay on course to build something that would lead directly into the finished game.
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73.
 
Re: Star Citizen Dogfighting Module Delay
Dec 17, 2013, 15:32
73.
Re: Star Citizen Dogfighting Module Delay Dec 17, 2013, 15:32
Dec 17, 2013, 15:32
 
Stormsinger wrote on Dec 17, 2013, 15:12:
Not quite...the long story in short form is they promised it in December, "no matter what". And didn't deliver...no matter how you want to spin it.

Remember, I did say I understood the reasoning. But to make a public promise and fail at it is still a flop, no matter the reasoning. It's poor management and worse PR.

I was trying to keep it as simple as possible, but yes I suppose they promised the dogfighting module in December. They also at around the same time mentioned their concern with the existing netcode and that it wouldn't offer the experience they were originally wanting.

Failing on an alpha/beta promise isn't so much a bad PR thing. How many times have other games with publicly released alphas and betas went past their promised dates? How many times have those alphas and betas been utterly awful and caused a shit storm in themselves. I think they did the right decision on this one, of course everyone won't agree and you can't make everyone happy. People will complain no matter what really and if a company wants to take the time to release a more solid tester to it's valued customers then I am all about that. People have put a lot of money and faith on the line for this game and CIG wants to do right by their customers and put out a better product then they originally were going to release. I think PR wise that goes a long more way then rushing out some thing most people wouldn't be happy with just to appease the masses.
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